


in all chaos there is cosmos

by jaekyu



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ready Or Not Fusion, Blood and Injury, Death Rituals, Emotional Infidelity, Lee Taeyong: Final Girl, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Morally Ambiguous Character, light-hearted horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27097141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: How does one family even make this much money, Taeyong replies. It’s a joke. He means for it to be playful.Oh. That’s an easy one, Johnny scoffs. His hand is still low on Taeyong’s spine.Pact with the Devil, he whispers.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Lee Taeyong, Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 19
Kudos: 82





	in all chaos there is cosmos

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY SPOOKY MONTH!
> 
> like, almost two weeks ago i tweeted about how people should write [READY OR NOT (2019)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtYTwUxhAoI&ab_channel=SearchlightPictures) aus -- and then i wrote one myself. this fic will contain vague spoilers because i follow some of the movies plot points a little bit so! if it's a movie you haven't seen before and don't want spoiled maybe come back after you watched it! it's a really fun movie, i promise. 
> 
> if you have no interest, here's the most basic premise: Taeyong marries into a wealthy family that has made a deal with the Devil, like, forever ago to sustain their wealth. Anyone who marries into the family has a game randomly assigned to them to be played after midnight the night they get married. If they pull "Hide and Seek" the rest of the family members have to hunt them down and sacrifice them before dawn or BAD SHIT HAPPENS to the family. 
> 
> i wouldn't say the violence is super graphic but i'm using the warning just in case because there is a fair bit of it, as well as a fair amount of descriptions of blood and injury. in addition, the Jaehyun/Taeyong is not the main pairing -- Johnny/Taeyong is the main focus of this fic -- but, for the record, Jaehyun is the family member Taeyong marries to be brought into the family. Johnny is my surrogate for the Adam Brody character.
> 
> i've never written anything like this before so i hope you enjoy! tysm to alex for reading this over and also letting me spoil this movie for her haha.

_In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order._   
**— CARL JUNG.**

delicate in every way but one — the swordplay  
god knows we like archaic kinds of fun — the old ways  
  
chance is the only game I play with, baby  
we let our battles choose us  
**— GLORY AND GORE** , Lorde. 

* * *

Three months before he will ask Taeyong to marry him, Jaehyun takes him hunting.

“I’ve never even held a gun before,” Taeyong tells him. He has his feet tucked underneath him in Jaehyun's passenger seat. “Don’t even think I’ve ever seen a working one in real life.” Ranges of mountain and orange-hued trees close in around the road from all sides, creating an odd feeling of not-quite claustrophobia.

“It’s an old money thing,” Jaehyun explains. “It’s not really about hunting. It’s more about having power over something. That’s all most things are about when you’re old money.”

Jaehyun always speaks of the money as if he’s removed from it. As if he doesn’t have an expensive car, an expensive apartment. He doesn’t speak to his family much, but the smell of wealth sticks to him. It’s a stench Taeyong could never replicate.

The air feels cold, even inside the car with the heat on. Taeyong shivers, and wishes he had brought a sweater. “You don’t sound like you like it all that much. Remind me why we’re doing this?”

Jaehyun clicks his tongue. It takes longer than Taeyong would have expected for him to answer. “Because,” he finally says, and Taeyong can tell from his tone he’s choosing his words carefully. “Because if you’re going to stick around — like I plan to convince you to do — we’ll probably go hunting with my family at some point. It’d impress them if you knew your way around — well, all of it. The whole thing.”

Taeyong allows himself to feel charmed by Jaehyun. He rubs his hand over Jaehyun’s thigh, once, then twice, before he turns towards the window to watch the scenery pass by him again.

There is a white-tailed deer grazing at the side of the road. It raises its head, ears twitching, and it’s almost like Taeyong makes eye contact with it as it goes by. It seems startled, but it does not look afraid. Taeyong wonders when the switch might happen, if this deer will not know what’s best for it until the flesh of its belly is pierced and bleeding its life away. Will it lament its fate as it lays dying? Will it wonder what it might have done differently?

“It’s sad,” Taeyong says aloud a thought he had meant to keep to himself. “Thinking about killing something that’s just trying to live its life.”

Jaehyun shrugs. “It’s just Darwinism.”

There’s a lump in Taeyong’s throat like he’s swallowed the centre of an apple, filled with cyanide seeds.

He resolves not to think about the deer anymore.

(Three months later, when Jaehyun asks Taeyong to marry him, Taeyong will have that same feeling in his throat. He’ll have to push past the discomfort of it to even get the word out — the _yes_ — and later, in the bathroom, Taeyong will cough and cough like he’s waiting for the poison to come up. But it won’t. Because it does not exist.

Taeyong will look at himself in the vanity mirror. He will find himself reminded of the deer: startled, but not scared.

Not yet.)

Jaehyun has two brothers. They both come to the wedding. Taeyong meets them both for the first time at the wedding.

Mark is the youngest. There is still a boyish charm to his face. His mother has to reknot his tie for him, when he emerges from their sprawling mansion with it crooked. He laughs often, and when he does it is with his entire body. He appears well-meaning. When Taeyong is introduced to him he hugs him like someone who has known him for years. Taeyong thinks he likes him, that they might get along. Mark seems as if he does not fall into the stereotypes of wealth, a compliment Taeyong would also afford Jaehyun.

The eldest brother is Johnny.

Taeyong wonders why Jaehyun is seemingly the only brother who does not use his English name, but he thinks it might just be another thing lost to him in the politics of passed on legacies. Maybe Jaehyun did not get to keep his English name when he distanced himself from his family. Maybe he has to come back to earn it again.

Taeyong does not think that Jaehyun and Mark’s mother is Johnny’s mother, but he thinks it might be rude to ask. Add it to the list, he supposes. Johnny is married and he brings his wife to the wedding with him. Her name is Seulgi, and she is very beautiful, in that harsh, intimidating way. She rolls her eyes every time Johnny pours himself another full cup of whiskey, honey-brown liquid from a decanter he’s stolen off a tray carried by a waiter.

Johnny approaches Taeyong as he stands in the shadow of the large house.

The long stairway that leads down into the garden has been draped with white and gold finery, and huge pots of flowers have been arranged each a few steps down from the last. Every time Taeyong gazes upon all of it — the house, with its shadow that stretches for what seems like miles, the decorations arranged by hired hands, the family, immaculately dressed, the husband, handsome and kind, the ring, heavy around his finger — he forgets, for a second, that it’s all for him. He forgets that this is what he’s married into. He forgets this is something he is allowed to keep.

“Pretty gaudy, isn’t it?” Johnny says about the house. He’s leaning into Taeyong, saying it close to the shell of his ear. His hand is on the small of Taeyong’s back, and it is heavy and warm. Taeyong can smell every single glass of whiskey Johnny has downed. _I look up to my brother_ , Taeyong remembers Jaehyun telling him once, _more than anyone else_. Taeyong can barely believe this is the man Jaehyun had been talking about.

He faces Johnny. Johnny does not face Taeyong in return, so Taeyong admires his profile. He’s handsome. He doesn’t look much like Jaehyun but still. Handsome. His jaw is cut like stained-glass, and it casts a sharp shadow against his throat. His mouth looks soft, his nose and cheekbones sculpted. It suits him, the extravagance, in a way it does suit Jaehyun, or even Mark. Johnny looks at home. In the suit, amongst the silver and black and gold.

“How does one family even make this much money?” Taeyong replies. It’s a joke. He means for it to be playful.

“Oh. That’s an easy one,” Johnny scoffs. His hand is still low on Taeyong’s spine. “Pact with the Devil,” he whispers.

For a brief moment, Taeyong thinks Johnny might be returning his playfulness. That, perhaps, they are exchanging jabs, Taeyong is exchanging little jokes with his new brother-in-law, isn’t that nice? But then Johnny turns his own head, away from the house, meeting Taeyong’s eyes, and he is not smiling, and he does not look like he’s joking. Not at all.

Taeyong doesn’t even think anything could be wrong until the first maid dies.

( _At midnight we’re going to play a game_ , Jaehyun had said.

_What kind of game?_ Taeyong had asked.

_That’s the thing_ , Jaehyun had replied. _We don’t know yet. It’s up to you to pick. Well. Kind of._

Taeyong had knit his eyebrows. _I don’t know what you mean._

Later, Taeyong had pulled the card from the little wooden box. The one it had spit out at him. The games room had high ceilings, high-backed chairs with curled over arms, a big round table with more than enough space for everyone. The whole family was sitting around Taeyong. They had been sitting up straight, like someone had inserted pins into the spines of each one of their voodoo dolls. The evening was pulled taut, like a bow string. An arrow was ready to cut through the evening, sharp and dangerous.

_Hide and seek_ , he had read aloud, laughing. _Are we really going to play that?_

No one said anything for a long moment. Then, Jaehyun’s father had said, _yes, we must_.

Taeyong had looked at Jaehyun. Jaehyun’s face had been placid. Taeyong had smiled, hopeful.

He had _smiled_.

Later still:

_There’s no way for me to win, is there? Not really._ Taeyong is still laughing. He is still smiling.

His father-in-law shakes his head. _Well, I suppose,_ he says after a moment of consideration. _You could stay hidden until dawn. But that’s a very long time from now._

They both turn to look at the enormous grandfather clock that looms in the hallway. It is only thirty minutes past midnight. _That is a very long time from now_ , Taeyong agrees. _I don’t think I’ll be able to stay hidden for that long_.

Taeyong’s father-in-law finally returns his smile. _Good_ , he says.)

Blood sprays in an upward trajectory across Taeyong’s suit and face when Mark shoots the maid with his crossbow. She chokes on her own blood, bubbling up from her throat, and it gets all over his chin and throat and chest, and it sprays even more blood across Taeyong’s white dress shirt, the folded handkerchief in his jacket pocket. She collapses. There is an arrow lodged firmly just to the left of her spinal cord, its fletching a shade of deep green.

Mark calls for his family. _I think I got him_ , he shouts, and Taeyong hears a chorus of footfalls.

The pieces fall into place then: Mark shot the maid, and he shot the maid because he thought the maid was _Taeyong_. Suddenly, with her blood warm and sticky across Taeyong’s face — his nose and his cheek and his brow — everything comes into sharp focus.

He turns and runs.

How embarrassing. How embarrassing that Taeyong was almost the white-tailed deer, startled but not scared, unaware of the danger until it was painted in red across his skin. How embarrassing that he almost welcomed his own demise with a warm embrace before he could even be the wiser.

Taeyong runs. He gives silent prayer to the maid, who had only ever just been doing her job, and had unknowingly afforded Taeyong the additional thirty seconds he needed to keep himself alive. He keeps running. He does not stop until he is so out of breath his lungs burn as if he’s swallowed hot coals.

Johnny finds Taeyong in the library.

Instead of calling out to the others, he turns to Taeyong and says, pityingly, “he didn’t tell you about any of this, did he?”

Taeyong shakes his head, jaw clenched. He is still breathing heavy from running, chest heaving. He’s abandoned his suit jacket, somewhere he can’t remember. He’s not wearing his shoes anymore, either. They were loud. Now Taeyong’s feet are bare, save for his socks, and it is not very comfortable but it is quiet.

Johnny closes the door to the library behind himself. He sighs. In three long strides, he meets a small wooden table in the centre of the room. There is another decanter on the table. Johnny pours himself a drink from it.

Taeyong does not move. He is acutely aware of the sawed-off shotgun clutched loosely in Johnny’s hand, and what it could mean for him should he make any sudden movements.

Johnny takes a long sip. _First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you._ “I told Seulgi about all of this,” Johnny gestures around himself with his hand still clutched around his glass. “Before we got married, for the record.”

“Who would marry someone if they knew about this?” Taeyong bites back. He thinks about the way Seulgi had picked up her own weapon against Taeyong, just like the rest of them. No hesitation, not a shred of sympathy, of empathy, of anything. Taeyong doesn’t think he’d ever have it in him to do that.

He thinks about Jaehyun, for a split second, but it hurts too much to dwell on. Taeyong can’t think about that if he wants to make it out of here.

Johnny swallows the second half of his glass in one heavy gulp. He laughs. “I was going to say,” and he’s stepping towards Taeyong now, glass forgotten on the table, shotgun still in his grip. “That you have no idea what some people are willing to do for money,” Johnny’s not pressing Taeyong against the wall, not yet, but the presence of him makes Taeyong shrink against it anyway. “But I guess you’re pretty well-acquainted with that idea now, yes?”

Taeyong does not answer. The shotgun bumps against his shin. Johnny holds his gaze, something burrowed deep into the endless darkness of his eyes.

“Didn’t end up mattering with Seulgi, by the way. She pulled _Old Maid_.”

“Why don’t you just kill me?”

Johnny sighs. He finally breaks eye contact with Taeyong when he closes his eyes, using his thumb and index finger to massage his temples. “Listen,” he begins to answer, taking a step back from Taeyong. Down the hall, it sounds like a door slams shut. “I know it’s not very fair. Especially since Jaehyun didn’t fill you in. But,” another door slam, closer to the library this time. “This doesn’t end well for you. No way around it. I just don’t want to be the one who serves you up.”

Someone is shouting, down the hall a ways, but still very close. Multiple sets of feet move together, move closer.

Johnny drops his shotgun onto the floor below him. “I’ll give you a ten second head start.”

He turns back to the table to pour himself another drink. Taeyong takes off through the door at the opposite end of the library.

He counts all the way to thirty before he hears Johnny shout, “he’s in here!”

Taeyong finds himself mourning for everything he was promised and that has been ripped away from him, no matter how undeserving he might have been of it.

“I’ve never had a family before,” he remembers saying to Jaehyun’s mother at the reception. “I’m really happy to be a part of this one.”

“And we’re happy to have you,” she had replied, smiling the way Taeyong always imagined a mother who loved you might smile. She had tucked a strand of Taeyong’s hair behind his ear.

Taeyong thinks maybe to give her the benefit of the doubt. She had no way of knowing, back then, that he’d draw _Hide and Seek_. She couldn’t assume this was how they’d end up: the hunter and the hunted, the predator and the prey.

But then she seemingly feels no remorse when she sinks a small hunting knife into Taeyong’s palm as he struggles with her. He decides, then, that no one in this family deserves the benefit of anything from him. Least of all his life.

A second maid dies. This time, it is not an accident.

She catches Taeyong stumbling out of the swinging kitchen door, a kitchen towel hastily affixed over the wound in Taeyong’s hand. She opens her mouth, as if to scream, but something stops her short.

There is warmth spreading along Taeyong’s uninjured hand. Thick, viscous, tangible warmth. Something you might reach out and grab, like a blanket. He looks down; his good hand is clutched tightly around the handle of a chef’s knife — a weapon he barely remembers grabbing, weak from exhaustion and blood loss — and the blade is lodged firmly into the maid’s belly. It’s her blood all over Taeyong’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, voice shaky, as he drives the blade upwards, tearing open more flesh, pulling apart more of her insides, spilling more blood.

“Don’t say sorry,” a voice comes from a dark corner of the room. Taeyong doesn’t know where he is, in the grand design of this big, big house. A house with too many rooms, too many nooks and crannies, too many places to hide, too many places to be found. “She wasn’t really very good at her job.”

The maid collapses, just as the first one did, onto the floor below. She takes the knife with her. Taeyong wishes he had learnt both their names. He wishes they could have met a better fate than this. They didn’t deserve this from this family, from him.

“What time is it?” Taeyong asks the shadow. Then the shadow steps into the yellow light, and it’s Johnny. Taeyong had guessed it was Johnny.

“Three-thirty in the morning,” Johnny replies. “Sun comes up at five-thirty.”

Taeyong is exhausted. He feels it deep in his bone marrow. Like someone has replaced it with wet cement, and it’s slowly drying and hardening inside of him. He has not stopped running. He has a throbbing hole in the palm of his hand. His own blood is mixed with that of others, a mess on his clothes: the two maids, his mother-in-law’s from when he had cold-cocked her on the side of the head with a candlestick. _Lee Taeyong, in the dining room, with the candlestick_. He wishes he could lie down and sleep. Giving up would be so much easier than all of this. It would hurt, for a split second, but then it would be over. Because even if he makes it out of this, now, what happens then? What kind of life could Taeyong even lead?

He’d have to leave Jaehyun. Of course he’d have to. And then he would be all alone again.

“Two more hours,” Taeyong says, defeated. “What happens when the sun comes up?”

Johnny shrugs, “who knows.” He’s not wearing his suit jacket anymore, either, but he’s still wearing his tie. It is only slightly askew. “No one’s ever made it to dawn. Could all be bullshit. But my brothers and I slaughtered a goat every year on our birthdays until we were eighteen, so I’m not sure if I believe it is.”

“Maybe you and your family deserve whatever happens to you if I make it until dawn.”

There is no waver in Johnny’s voice when he says, “maybe we do.”

For not the first time, Taeyong wonders how sad Johnny just might be. Beneath the veneer of wealth, beneath the not-so-carefully concealed drinking problem. How deep does that well go? How many awful things has he thrown into the pit of it, left to rot, hoped he might forget?

“They did this to your mom, didn’t they?” Taeyong asks. He steps over the maid, her stock-still corpse. His hands won’t stop shaking. “She pulled _Hide and Seek_. Just like me.”

“I was three when my parents got married,” Johnny replies, not a direct answer, but an answer all the same. “And back then I just believed whatever anyone ever told me but, y’know, even back then I knew it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair what they did to her. And then, after all of that — well, my step-mom pulled _Go Fish_. Can you believe that?”

Taeyong approaches Johnny slowly. It is a mirror of the advancement Johnny made on Taeyong in the library. Only this time, neither of them carry weapons. Taeyong’s only choice for one is still buried inside its first and only victim and, well, he can’t be sure about Johnny. But he knows, at least, that the shotgun is nowhere to be seen.

“Johnny,” Taeyong calls his name, voice steady. His socks are soaked through with blood. The pain in his hand has gone from a throbbing to a numbness, a numbness that stretches all the way up to Taeyong’s elbow. “You could help me,” Taeyong says, choosing his words carefully. “Please.”

Taeyong had always thought of himself as someone with too much pride to beg. But maybe not.

Johnny breathes out slowly, through his nose. “You think I’m a good person,” Taeyong is so close to him, now, that he can feel the heat from Johnny’s body again. The way he did when Johnny put the hand on the small of his back. “I’m not. I’m just like the rest of them. It’s in my blood.”

“You don’t have to be,” Taeyong counters. Those are the words he chooses, instead of _no, you’re not like them_. He thinks it might be important for him to frame this as Johnny’s choice. For Johnny to be the conscious architect of his own destiny, to make the turn away from his family, instead of falling in line with them. “You can help me. You can save me.”

Taeyong kisses him. He’s not sure why he does it. Maybe Taeyong is desperate to feel something besides fear. Besides the instinctual, all-consuming desire to survive. Maybe he does it because he thinks it might give him more humanity, in Johnny’s eyes. Maybe if Taeyong becomes someone Johnny knows can be held, can be kissed, he will think of Taeyong as more of a person. A person with a life that they deserve to continue living. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that Johnny is handsome, and adrenaline has this funny way of mixing itself together with lust. Maybe it’s because Taeyong has just killed someone, an atrocity he’d never even considered he’d have the stomach for, and he’s desperate to feel grounded in his own body again. Maybe it’s because Taeyong can imagine this alternate universe where Johnny is the brother he falls in love with, instead of Jaehyun. That it’s Johnny whose smile greets Taeyong every morning, lying across from him in their shared bed. That it’s Johnny who takes Taeyong out for dinner, and picks Taeyong up from work in his expensive car, hair pushed back by his sunglasses. That it is Johnny who invites Taeyong to be a part of his family. Taeyong imagines, in this altered timeline, that Johnny tells him the truth before he asks Taeyong to marry him. And Taeyong doesn’t leave him, but he doesn’t stay for the money either. Instead, he stays for love. And when the wedding night finally comes, Taeyong draws _Checkers_ , and everything is fine. Everything is easier. Everything is good.

The universe they exist in, at this moment, is not the universe where Taeyong falls in love with Johnny. But Johnny kisses Taeyong like it might be.

Taeyong grips Johnny’s dress shirt with both hands, as best as he can manage with the sharp pain in one of them. It smears half-dried blood all over the fabric, ruining its pristine whiteness. Johnny grips Taeyong in return, one hand in the mess of Taeyong’s hand, and the other at the small of Taeyong’s back. The same place he had rested it once before this moment.

Everything around them is the quietest it has been all night. There is no noise of feet shuffling above them, or a door opening and closing nearby. Maybe this is some forgotten corner of this estate. Maybe they really are alone.

“Taeyong,” Johnny puts a sliver of space between his and Taeyong’s mouth, breathes Taeyong’s name into the small space. He closes it again, pressing his mouth against Taeyong’s once again. It does not last quite as long this time. “You,” Johnny speaks again, pulling further away from Taeyong’s mouth this time. “Back through the kitchen, there’s the staircase to the wine cellar. There’s a door that will take you out to the garage in there.”

Taeyong’s heart is in his throat. Can he trust what Johnny is saying to him? He would like to trust him. He would like to believe him. He would like to have a moment of this night — a night spent running for his life, spent running from everything that was supposed to embrace him now that he’s married into it — that does not feel like him against the world. He would like to feel like someone is on his side. In ways beyond superficial. In ways beyond _I’ll give you a ten second head start_.

Taeyong asks the question he doesn’t really want the answer to: “what if you’re lying?”

“Then I’m lying,” Johnny replies. He and Taeyong are still standing so close to each other, still sharing body heat, still sharing breaths. Johnny reaches out two fingers and grasps the edge of Taeyong’s shirt sleeve. “And whether you take my advice or not doesn’t matter because they catch you either way. Or,” Johnny pauses, his eyes roam Taeyong’s face, expression unreadable. “Or I’m not lying, and I’ve just bought you some time.”

Taeyong is not sure if it’s Johnny’s words that convince him to trust the other man, or if he’s just that desperate. But whatever. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have any other choice.

“Okay,” Taeyong finally admits it, both to himself and aloud. “I trust you.”

He turns to leave and follow Johnny’s instructions, but Johnny holds his shirt sleeve. It does not panic Taeyong that Johnny has not let him go yet though, for some reason. Maybe his survival instincts are starting to dull. Maybe he’s closer to giving up than he thought he might be.

“Taeyong,” every time Johnny says his name it’s like he’s telling Taeyong a secret. “You’re right. We do deserve it. Whatever happens to us if you make it until dawn. My family’s been playing games with other people’s lives for too long.”

Taeyong kisses him again. This time, he does it to tell Johnny, without words, that: _Maybe they do. But you might not. I don’t know what happens but maybe you don’t deserve it._

And then they break apart, and Johnny drops his hold on Taeyong’s sleeve, and Taeyong slips back into the darkness of the kitchen.

Johnny does not follow.

Taeyong almost makes it to the gate.

That’s the worst part. He gets so close. From the garage, he finds the door that leads him outside. It’s so dark out. He can taste freedom on his tongue like fresh rain, like a warm drink after a long day spent in the cold. Taeyong has no plan for what happens after he makes it off the estate.

It doesn’t end up mattering. He never makes it far enough to even consider his options.

He sets off an alarm as soon as he opens the door to the outside. They send the dogs after him. The dogs run faster than Taeyong could ever hope to run in peak condition, nevermind the energy he’s already expended, the blood he’s lost. One of them sinks its teeth into the meatiest part of Taeyong’s calf and he cries out. It doesn't take much to bring him to the ground after that.

He flits in and out of consciousness. After Taeyong hits the ground and stops moving, the dogs let up. Trained very well, it would seem, and not trained to kill him. They must need him alive, Taeyong rationalizes. For whatever they’re about to do to him, they must need him alive. Taeyong thinks he should be more afraid. But he can’t muster the energy for it. He feels drained, in every single way.

Taeyong’s vision comes and goes in waves. It starts to rain, water collecting on Taeyong’s eyelashes and on his lips and in the dips of his collarbones.

He can hear voices coming towards him. Three of them, all of them distinctly male.

He thinks it will hurt to die. At least for a moment.

But it will be easy, at the very least. Easier than all of this.

Back in the house, they handcuff Taeyong to the footboard of one of the extravagant beds.

He doesn’t recognize the room he’s in. He wonders how many people might have died in this room, how many people have died in this house in general. Johnny said his family have been doing this for years. How many years? How many forgotten bodies? How many lives ripped from the people who had been living them to sustain one family's wealth?

_Pact with the Devil_ , Taeyong remembers Johnny saying. Now he realizes why Johnny hadn’t looked like he was joking.

There are old sepia-toned photographs in an antique hutch in this room, and a few more scattered around on ornate-legged tables. Countless faces watch Taeyong, at the mercy of their descendants. Did everyone in these photographs participate in these rituals? Did they all fall in line easily? Did any of them fight back?

“Fucking rich people,” Taeyong mumbles to himself, voice hoarse.

When Jaehyun opens the door and steps into the room, Taeyong wonders whose decision it might have been to send him.

“Hi,” Jaehyun says, lamely. Taeyong says nothing, just clenches his jaw. Jaehyun bends his knees so he is eye-level with Taeyong. He reaches out for him, to maybe brush Taeyong’s wet bangs out of his eyes, but Taeyong flinches away from him. He sighs, “Taeyong,” and he actually has the audacity to sound hurt.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Taeyong spits back.

“I love you, Taeyong,” Jaehyun replies.

Taeyong can’t help it, he laughs. “Fuck you,” he tells Jaehyun. “You’re going to _kill_ me, Jaehyun.”

“I didn’t think you’d pull _Hide and Seek_ ,” Jaehyun shakes his head, rubbing a hand over his face. “The last person who picked _Hide and Seek_ in the entire family was —”

“Johnny’s mom,” Taeyong gives an answer Jaehyun has no way of knowing he has.

Jaehyun stops for a moment. “Yeah,” he swallows. “I just thought — I thought you’d pick something dumb, like everyone else had, and it wouldn’t matter. Everything would be okay.”

“But I didn’t,” the cuffs Taeyong wears bite into his wrists, cold and unforgiving. They don’t care if they hurt him. Nothing here cares if they hurt him. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you ask me to _marry_ you?”

“Taeyong,” he wishes Jaehyun would stop saying his name. “Taeyong, all you ever talked about when we got serious was how badly you wanted a family of your own. I knew — I knew it was important for you. And I knew if I told you you’d leave. What choice did I have?”

“Some family.” Taeyong scoffs. “You could have left, Jaehyun. I don’t — I don’t deserve this.”

“No, Taeyong,” Jaehyun says the words quietly. “You’re right. You don’t. But I’m —”

“Selfish.” Taeyong cuts him off again. “You’re selfish. Your whole family is. Guess you can’t help it, can you? It’s in your blood.”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun admits. “I’m selfish. It’s in my blood.”

Taeyong can’t stand to think this is ever someone he was in love with.

It turns out there's a whole ritual with this. That’s why they keep Taeyong alive. That’s why they leave him alive until just before dawn. Because there are rules. The Devil is in the details.

The altar is old, carved wood, hard and uncomfortable. The cuffs they affix around Taeyong’s wrist are worn leather. Not quite as old as the table — they’ve probably been replaced a few times — but still, they’re old. Other people have laid on this table, in these cuffs.

Taeyong realizes, suddenly, that the last person who did was Johnny’s mom.

Johnny stands around the altar with the rest of his family. They are all shrouded in robes. It’s all very fucking theatrical, as all rich people tend to be. The big houses, the big parties. It’s all about the fucking threatrics. Even this whole thing: making a deal with the Devil? That’s all about the fucking show of it all.

Taeyong holds Johnny’s eye contact. He doesn’t even spare Jaehyun a glance, who stands on the opposite side of the altar to Johnny. Jaehyun has already taken everything he could from Taeyong. He does not deserve Taeyong’s final moments.

(Taeyong hopes, in vain, that it might be true that his life will flash before his eyes before it drains away from him. And if it does, well, he hopes maybe, his brain will play for him the alternate universe where he falls in love with Johnny again. Taeyong can’t guarantee his end in that timeline is any happier than this one, but he’d like to think it would be. It would be nice, to have something like that, before Taeyong falls asleep forever. Before Taeyong breathes his last and sustains this family until the next poor fool lets themselves be tricked into this house, into this family, into playing their games.)

The blade they’re going to plunge into Taeyong’s heart is old, too. Its handle is carved with symbols similar to the ones carved into the table. The blade is curved, like an ugly, villainous smile. It glints in the candlelight. Everyone is chanting under their breath, something Taeyong doesn’t understand, something he doesn’t care to understand.

Fuck these people. Fuck family. Turns out it’s overrated.

Taeyong closes his eyes as he anticipates the descent of the blade. But then — then, suddenly, his right wrist is free. And before Taeyong can think to do anything else, he jerks his body so he takes the blade in the shoulder. It hurts like hell, but it’s not his heart. It won’t kill him.

His wrist is free. The wrist that had been pinned down on the same side that Johnny was standing on, it’s free. Taeyong scrambles to sit up, tears the knife out of his shoulder to use as his own weapon. He cuts his second wrist free. His in-laws are looking at him with some mix of shock and fear. Good. They deserve it.

He scrambles off the table. His hand and his shoulder and his calf scream at him, erupt with pain from all the sudden movements, but Taeyong ignores it. He backs himself into a corner of the room, back covered from any attack that might come from behind him, dagger brandished in his good hand.

As Taeyong takes his defensive stance, the room settles. Taeyong is breathing hard. Everyone is staring at him. All of them panicked except — except Johnny, whose face is placid. Who has shed his ritual outfit and has found the bottle of alcohol and diamond-cut glasses sitting on a hutch behind him.

“Fuck you,” is the first thing Taeyong says. “Fuck all of you.”

Nobody responds. Nobody moves.

“Taeyong,” Jaehyun takes a step towards him, arms outstretched defensively. “Taeyong, think about this for a second, okay? Do you really want to hurt someone?”

“What the fuck do you _mean_?” Taeyong shouts back. “You and your fucking family tried to sacrifice me, you _sick fuck_.”

From his corner of the room, over the curve of his glass of clear-coloured alcohol of choice, Johnny laughs.

Jaehyun turns to him. “What the fuck? Do you think this is a fucking game?”

“Yeah,” Johnny shrugs. “ _Hide and Seek_ , remember?”

That’s when it starts happening.

Taeyong notices the strip of sunlight coming in through the curtains, and so does Seulgi, and then all of a sudden — the sound it makes is sickening. Like a bomb going off, but it’s a bomb full of organic matter. It’s much squishier sounding than a real bomb.

Taeyong’s mother-in-law bursts into a mess of gore and tissue, all over everyone in the room. Seulgi screams — and then her scream is cut short when the same fate befalls her. It happens again (Mark) and then one more time (Taeyong’s father-in-law) before it’s only Taeyong, Jaehyun and Johnny left in the room.

“Taeyong.” And Jaehyun says the only thing of any worth to Taeyong that he has all night, “I’m sorry.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Taeyong replies, and then Jaehyun’s blood sprays him from head to toe.

“Well, would you look at that,” Johnny muses. He’s still standing there, finishing his drink. He’s covered in his family's blood. For the first time in all of his life, he and Taeyong are living similar realities. “It wasn’t all bullshit.”

Taeyong drops the knife. It clatters to the ground like any other knife would. It had felt so much different when it was hanging above Taeyong’s head, so heavy, so _important_ but now — now it is nothing.

“Do you think,” Taeyong says, coming around to the side of the altar that Johnny is on. “Do you think you’ll stay? Because you helped me?”

Johnny meets him halfway. “Nah,” he shakes his head. “If there’s one thing I learned about Devils growing, it’s that they're not very merciful.” Taeyong lays both of his hands on Johnny’s chest, and Johnny grips Taeyong’s forearm, just above his elbow. “Besides, like I told you — I’m just like them. I deserve it too.”

“No,” Taeyong shakes his head. “No, you don’t. You saved me, Johnny. Thank you. You don’t deserve it.”

He kisses Johnny because he can. Because why shouldn’t he? Because he just looked the Devil in the eye and spit in its face. And if Johnny hadn’t loosened the cuff around his wrist — well, this story would be ending a very different way. Johnny kisses Taeyong in return. Taeyong remembers the taste of his mouth from earlier and it is almost — _almost_ — like that embrace of safety he had been looking for before, when he had almost made it out.

But it is fleeting.

“Taeyong,” Johnny pulls away. He kisses Taeyong’s forehead, despite all the blood and tissue that covers him, and then presses his own forehead against Taeyong’s. “It was nice knowing you.”

“Goodbye, Johnny.”

Taeyong closes his eyes.

“Goodbye.”

And then Taeyong is alone.

**Author's Note:**

> [fic twitter](https://twitter.com/bIoodbuzzed), [personal twitter](https://twitter.com/sieepwellbeast), [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/bloodbuzzed)


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